That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 21

Shizu-san’s Students

In today’s episode of TenSura we’re introduced to five of Shizu’s former students. These are Kenya Misaki, Chloe Aubert, Alice Rondo, Ryota Sekiguchi, and Gale Gibson. And, as you may recall from last week’s episode, these children only have five years to live from the time that they were summoned.

While I think these kids could be fairly good characters, we’ve already hit a plot hole with them, which is the whole five years to live thing. When this concept was introduced last week, I had some doubts about how it worked due to Shizu clearly not having this five-year limit, but luckily that was cleared up at least.

You see, while I assumed Ifrit’s power would take more of a toll on Shizu’s body, it turns out that because he was implanted within her, he served as a way to regulate her massive amount of magicules. These kids don’t have superior spirits within them, which is why they have this problem.

Kenya, Chloe, Alice, Ryota, and Gale

Alright, so that makes sense, but what about the plot hole I mentioned? Well, assuming these kids were summoned right when this series started, they would only have three years remaining because Rimuru has been in this world for two years so far. That still works out just fine.

But, what doesn’t work out is the fact that Rimuru mentions these children were summoned into this world at the same time as Shizu. Are you seeing the problem yet? Shizu had been in this world for like 60+ years, which would mean these children have as well.

Now, I’m not a mathematician, but last time I checked 60 years was longer than 5 years, meaning these kids should have all died long ago. Further, none of them have aged a bit. Although Shizu didn’t appear to age past her 30s, she still aged, and I think the fact that she stopped physically aging was explained by Ifrit’s presence.

So, basically, the very existence of these children is a plot hole in and of itself. Checkmate, TenSura fans.

The Students’ Abilities

Ignoring the fact that these kids are just one giant plot hole, I like the fact that they each have magic specializations. I’m just not much of a fan of characters who have an affinity for everything. It’s much more interesting to me to have characters specialize in different things so they have to work together.

Kenya’s personality is basically the same as your typical shounen battle series protagonist. He’s loud, obnoxious, and thinks he’s the best. He also uses a sword combined with fire type magic because he wants to be like Shizu, and that’s what she used.

Chloe is essentially the opposite of Kenya in every aspect. She’s quiet and would rather immerse herself in her picture books rather than fighting. However, her water magic is exceptionally powerful, and she shows the most immediate promise of the five kids.

Alice specializes in golem type magic, which means she uses controls dolls to fight. While this isn’t a very strong ability right now due to her use of stuffed animals, Rimuru does note that with the right, specially made golems, she has the potential to be the strongest.

Ryota is the Hulk of the group. Although he seems quiet and shy on the outside, his specialty is in berserker magic. When he wants to, he can become extremely enraged which boosts all of his physical abilities. But, as the name of this magic implies, he sacrifices his rational thinking to do so.

Finally we have Gale, who doesn’t really seem to specialize in a particular type of magic. However, that doesn’t mean he’s a jack of all trades. Instead, he trades a specialization for pure magic power. While his magic attacks don’t have a nature or type, they are the most concentrated and deal the most damage.

Sky Dragon Attack

While training his new students, Rimuru suddenly feels the immense pressure of an enemy heading towards the capitol city. It turns out to be a Sky Dragon, and doesn’t really have anything to do with the plot as far as we know for now.

By that I don’t mean that the appearance of this dragon doesn’t serve a purpose, but just that it doesn’t yet seem that it was specifically sent by someone to target this city because Rimuru was there. Instead, the fight against the dragon is how Rimuru can show his students that he’s strong, and it introduces him to a new ally.

However, I think the fight against the Sky Dragon was probably my least favorite part of the episode just because of the bad animation that was used. Seriously, the dragon is just frozen in the pose pictured below and just moved around the screen like that. That’s as close to not being animation as you can get.

Rimuru vs. a Sky Dragon

Oh, also the dragon was just one-shot like just about everything else in this series. But, if you’ve been around my reviews of this series before, then you probably already knew I was going to complain about that. I just want some good action instead of constant teases.

And, before you give me the whole, “but TenSura isn’t an action anime” thing, guess what, anime don’t have to be action anime to include good action. Just look at the Monogatari series for example. That’s not an action series and yet it has some of the best animated action sequences I’ve seen just come out of nowhere.

A New Ally

So, who was this new ally Rimuru makes thanks to his fight with the Sky Dragon? It was a wealthy merchant from the capitol city. As with just about everyone else, Rimuru is able to convince him to move to his own city in order to set up a trade network for the new nation of the Jura Forest.

But, while this merchant will probably be helpful, his character is the type to betray a protagonist as soon as a more profitable opportunity arises. So, will this happen in TenSura, the anime without conflict? My guess is no. A big deal was made of the fact that he’s trustworthy, and I think it’s fairly safe for us to trust that assertion.

However, while this trustworthy merchant is indeed a good ally to have, his assistant, or wife, or whoever the woman with him was, is arguably more important. This woman hails from a village which is near the entrance to the superior spirit world, and Rimuru needs to gather some of these spirits for his students.

It’ll be interesting to see just how Rimuru goes about collecting these spirits. Will he just capture them like animals? Will he somehow convince them to be implanted within these children?

The latter option seems like a hard sell unless there are some serious benefits to the spirits, but the former doesn’t seem like something Rimuru would do. Perhaps the spirits can’t leave the spirit realm without a host and so this pairing would be mutually beneficial.

Either way, at the end of the episode Rimuru and his students head off on an adventure to the land of the spirits far to the south in a country called the Ulbresia Republic. There’s also a country known as the Heretic’s Dynasty they need to cross through first, and I hope we get to learn more about that.

Conclusion

So, what did you think about this week’s episode of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime? I didn’t think the episode was actually that bad other than the animation of the Sky Dragon “flying” and the fact that the existence of the children is one giant plot hole.

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